Ask-a-Grower Podcast #8-House & Garden Nutrients Shooting Powder

Transcription

We are here this morning at San Diego Hydroponics in Lakeside talking about Shooting Powder. Shooting Powder is the secret of every successful gardener. It’s an amazing high phosphorous high potassium stimulant from House & Garden. Basically you use Shooting Powder the last 3 weeks of flowering, unless you are on a 10 or 12 week cycle, maybe then it would stretch out to 4 weeks. You use it basically from the end of Top Booster on. The first week, you’re going to use it at one satchet per 25 gallons, and the last 2 weeks its going to be 2 satchets for 25 gallons. That’s about 2.6 grams per gallon, roughly about ⅝ of a teaspoon you’ll be using your Shooting Powder. Just double that strength in your later parts of flowering. The Shooting Powder has the unique ability to tell the plant to start building its flowers all over again. So even when you think you’re finished, you’re not. Your flowers are going to keep getting bigger and bigger, and your aromas will get a lot more fragrant.

And always be careful with Shooting Powder, because it is such a high phosphorous and potassium, to cut back your nutrients. So I think its about 1.2 EC where you actually drop it back, but in general, if at anytime if you are pushing your plants, feeding to a higher level, basically if your plant is really dark green, you might want to be very cautious about adding Shooting Powder. You might want to drop back your base nutrients when adding the Shooting Powder, or maybe if your variety is sick, drop back the Shooting Powder and stick with your regular formula. In general, it’s a very strong aggressive flowering agent, and it demands a lot from the plant. So just be cautious when adding it, and usually if your plant is light green and growing amazing and taking off, generally people can just add it it right in there and go for it. Again, this is a personal preference, and you really need to pay attention to your garden.

Q: Is there anything I should know, special considerations about storing Shooting Powder, can it be stored?

Shooting Powder is hydroscopic in nature, and basically what that means is that is attracts water out of the air. So storing Shooting Powder can be tricky. One trick that I like to tell people, is that you can take one satchet of Shooting Powder and put it into one gallon of water, and then you have a one gallon concentrate. Then basically what that is is one gallon will treat 24 gallons. One satchet of Shooting Powder is good for 25 gallons. So what that means is that every 5.3 ounces of your one gallon concentrate is good for one gallon. So if you are trying to use one gallon of feed water, you can make a one gallon concentrate. Drop one satchet into your one gallon, then 5.3 ounces of that is good for every one gallon of feed water.

If you choose to not mix it in a solution and store it, just be really aware, again, that the moisture in the air will actually cause the powder to clump up. Just try to keep it as sealed up as possible.

Q: Can I still use it if it clumps up?

Yes you can. Just try to break it down and make sure it dissolves really well in your solution before you use it. Also when you are using Shooting Powder, you may not want to re-use your soil. Your soil will need an extensive aggressive flush to make sure that all the phosphorous and potassium is washed free, which is very difficult, so generally we do not suggest that you re-use your soil if you are using Shooting Powder.

Q: Now does this include if I am using Shooting Powder with Drip Clean?

The amount of potassium and phosphorous that are present in this product, its gonna be nearly impossible with the amount that you are using in the last stages to get it all free. I mean, you can use it, but just note that an extra rinse of the soil is recommended. And if you are going to be putting young, tender plants in there it’s not recommend to put them in there after Shooting Powder. And just know that there is gonna be a lot of extra potassium or phosphorous in the soil if you decide to re-use it.

Even when not reusing soil because there are excess amounts, personally when growing in soil, I do give extra flush, whether its that whole last week, or just 7-10 days flush rather than just the 2-3 day pre-harvest flush with hydro.

And again, on the chart you’ll notice it’s a 3 to 4 day flush. The reason for the small flush is that actually, because in conjunction with Drip Clean, it actually will always keep your salt levels down. And again, if any time your salt levels or nutrient levels built up to high levels it is stored in excess parts of the leaves of the plant, and other storage areas in the plant. Basically you wanna make sure your Drip Clean is in place, and you should not have a big need for flush. If you do have excess nutrients and excess Shooting Powder stored up in your plant, you may want to flush up to a week.